Wednesday, June 23, 2004

Posted here Wednesday, June 23, 2004 at 12:04:44 PM     This is interesting and it had not occurred to me (I love these little doses of humilation) that animals don't "hear" what we hear.   -----Original Message----- From: NHNE [mailto:nhne@nhne.com] Sent: Wednesday, June 23, 2004 12:13 AM To: *News List Subject: [nhnenews] Early Hominid Ears Primed for Speech    EARLY HOMINID EARS PRIMED FOR SPEECH By Bob Holmes and Shaoni Bhattacharya New Scientist June 22, 2004   http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996053   Early humans evolved the anatomy needed to hear each other talk at least 350,000 years ago. This suggests rudimentary form of speech developed early on in our evolution.   The conclusion comes from studies of fossilised skulls discovered in the mountains of Spain. A team of Spanish and US researchers used CT scans to measure the bones and spaces in the outer and middle ears of five specimens, thought to belong to Homo heidelbergensis. This species is thought to be a relative of the ancestral line leading to neanderthals.   The team worked out how well the hearing apparatus they found could respond to sounds of various frequencies.   The hominids' ears would have been sensitive to frequencies between two to four kilohertz, the range most important for understanding human speech. Chimpanzees' ears are relatively insensitive at those frequencies. Their ears are most strongly attuned to sounds peaking at either one kHz or eight kHz. ********